All posts by Hugh Smith

Depressed Anonymous, Spiritual Heroes, The 12 Steps

FREE OF DEPENDENCE

Leave a comment

” ‘ I asked myself  “Why can’t the Twelve Steps work to release me from this unbearable depression? ”  By the hour, I stared at the St. Francis Prayer:”  ” It is better to comfort than to be comforted.”

Suddenly I realized what the answer might be. My basic flaw  had always been dependence on people or circumstances to supply me with prestige, security and  confidence.  Failing to get these things according to my perfectionist dreams and speculations, I fought for them. And when defeat came, so did my depression.

Reinforced by what grace I could find in prayer, I had to exert every ounce of will and action to cut off these faulty emotional dependencies upon people and circumstances.  Then only could I be free to love as Francis had loved.

SOURCE: Bill W., co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous

Depressed Anonymous, Exercise, Fellowship

A SYMPTOM OF DEPRESSION IS THAT I THOUGHT I WAS LOSING MY MIND!

1 Comment

I thought I was losing my mind. Why?  Well, when I was depressed, when I tried to read something–anything, I found to my surprise that I couldn’t retain information that I just read. In fact I would have to go back and re-read what I had just read. After awhile it seemed futile trying to read anything and retain it.  And here is the catch– this is where I got scared–no, not just a little bit worried–I was shaken. It was as if I lost my short term memory completely. I wondered what was going on in my brain? Was I suffering from some rare neurological disease or what? As it turned out I was also completely washed out. I couldn’t wait to get home after work and go to bed.  And another thing is that if I saw someone laughing or having a good time — I hated it! What right did they have enjoying life when all I could feel was the pain of my melancholia. I was helpless and hopeless. I felt out of control plus unable to manage anything for myself that I would consider positive.

Quite a composite of symptoms all telling me that something was not right. But what was the answer? What could all this mean?

So, I  decided to move my body and get out everyday and put some miles on my feet. Get some exercise. Get the blood flowing to my brain and wherever else it needed to go. Since these events were something new to me I didn’t really know what I had. I just knew I needed to do something–so, walking seemed my best bet. Over a year’s time it worked its healing and slowly my cognitive abilities returned.  I began to feel more in control and a lightness came  to me which had slowly evaporated a year previous.  What I am trying to share with you here is that when and if these symptoms make up part of your living experience, just know that they won’t last forever.

One of the many treasures of the Depressed Anonymous group is that when I tell my story with all my crazy physical symptoms, and how over time they gradually left me, it is here that members  of our fellowship knew they had come to the right place for help. They are no longer alone. And, they have a toolbox of skills, thanks to those who share their stories of recovery and how they too are no longer depressed. My story is their story!

Fellowship, The 12 Steps

SHAME AND GUILT. THERE IS A DIFFERENCE.

Leave a comment

I remember with a great amount of clarity a situation that   shaped my entire life. The event happened more than 5 decades ago. The shaming event happened in the third grade. The teacher asked me a question which I couldn’t answer correctly. She asked me twice and the more that I tried to think what answer she wanted the more flustered I became. For years, I could feel the heat in my face. I know my face must have  been beet red. There I was standing alone in the middle of the seated classmates and feeling lost. And then she said those words that are imprinted on what seems like every synapse and cell in my brain.

“You will never be like your brother.” ( He happened  to be two years ahead of me in school. He was really smart). And then she compared me to my uncle who happened  to be a Bible scholar whom she knew.  By that time my face felt like it was burning up. And it wasn’t til decades later that I no longer felt the fiery warmth on my face as I thought about standing there, alone, in front of the class.  The feelings of heat welled up from inside of me as I even thought about that event those  years later. I was shamed. Shamed clear through. Every part of me felt absolutely worthless and alone. Shame produced in me the feeling that I was a MISTAKE. Not that I made a simple English  grammar mistake –but that I was a mistake. This shame gradually withered away the more I shared with others  my experience.

Put simply:   Guilt is when you do something that is bad and you know it, and then you feel bad about what you did or didn’t do.

So feeling you are a mistake –feeling all alone,  unacceptable to self and others, creates a person who tends to hide, isolate and feel no purpose for their lives.  In my case, it was after getting into a 12 step program of recovery that others were having the same feelings about themselves as I was.  It was here in the context of forming a trusting relationship with those like myself, that I slowly clawed my way out of my own little painful world, into a world where I was accepted for who I was. My story, was  accepted and I  was given the tools to live a life filled now with hope, serenity and purpose.

Choice, Higher Power, Step 01, Step 02, The 12 Steps

Made A Decision To Turn My Life And My Will Over To The Care Of God As I Understand Him

Leave a comment

AFFIRMATION

I admitted that I was powerless over depression -that my life had become unmanageable. I now choose freedom instead of security and place my trust and hope in God’s guidance and direction. Help me trust in you, O God.

REFLECTION

I know as I immerse myself in the program, the more I seek the security of not having to feel pain -not having to forgive and never getting angry, I will indeed have security, the security of the high walls of a prison. I will always be able to predict how I feel. It will never change. I was always told that by being good and trying to be as perfect as I could, I would be happy.  Somehow this doesn’t work. I have worked at being good, always doing my best, but I still ended up in the prison of depression. What went wrong?  For today I will choose to be someone different. I will call a friend and/or I will take a walk. I will begin to  work on myself, trusting that my God or Higher Power will begin to help me find a path out of this prison that I have constructed. Today. I will trust myself to trust the God of my understanding.

MEDITATION

We need today, to allow ourselves the opportunity to take responsibility for the way we think and feel. It is our responsibility to finally yield to God, to trust the God as we understand him and let him enter into our life. (Personal comments). Steps 1, 3.

Despair

BEAGLES/RABBITS/CIRCLES

Leave a comment

What do beagles, rabbits and circles have in common?  I know you must be curious. Well, first of all, let me tell you that when I was growing up in a small community in Indiana, my Grandpa took my brother and I hunting. We hunted a lot. We mainly hunted squirrels and rabbits.  Grandpa also had some great help when hunting the rabbits. He had the assistance of Red and Dukie. They were awesome beagles!   When you are out in the wild hunting rabbits it always helps to have your helpers stirring up trouble. That is where the beagles come in. They always made things happen. When you heard the beagles with their high pitch cries you just knew the rabbits had been found out. Here is where the circle come in. Maybe you are aware or maybe you are not aware that when rabbits are running away from danger, they appear  to run in a circle. How do I know this? My grandpa told me. So one morning we three, my brother, Grandpa and myself heard Red and Dukie starting  their high pitched cries, Suddenly through the opening in the brush, two rabbits whizzed past, right in front of us. Then here come the beagles in hot pursuit right behind them.  Grandpa told me to stand on a stump facing the opening. He told us that they might come back this way. The cries of the beagles grew faint —  but not for long, as Red and Dukie’s cries started to increase in volume. And then, presto!  first one rabbit came through the brush, and then the second, I raised my shotgun,  fired a shot  at the second rabbit and missed. Those rabbits for some reason made a full circle and there they were again. I missed my chance.

So that was the day when I learned how some animals, who knows maybe all animals tend to run in circles. I do know that when I had gotten lost hunting squirrels and thought I was heading away from where I started I found myself back in the spot at which I started. What is it I thought? Why do we go in circles–does it have to do  with a dominant foot always turning us left or right?

Somebody smarter than me will have to help me here with this one.

With my symptoms of depression, I too keep circling trying to figure out in my head why I am depressed. The more I spiral downward in the unending circle of despair, the more I return  to those many places I have been before. None of these places gave me comfort or answers to the why I am depressed–only the fact that I have been here before. The mind when burdened appears to run in circles as well. What’s chasing us?

Hugh

Counseling, Spirituality

Late UN-breaking news!

Leave a comment

Wow!  How about that? Late UN-breaking news? Everywhere you go–it’s late breaking news. Come on folks.

I would be satisfied with more late UN-breaking news myself.  Put a trailer at the bottom of the screen and just let the late breaking news pass us by–like a watching the #17 bus head down the street. Well, anyway, I have some late UN-breaking news for you. As you can tell from the title of my BLOG, what I share here is pretty much your regular UN-breaking news. You know, like hey, if you are depressed have you ever considered doing this or trying that or whatever for your melancholia. By the way, that is what they used to call it–melancholia.   That is about as UN-breaking  as you can get. If you feel depressed,  paralyzed by fear, fatigue and purposeless in your life it might be the news for you to know there is hope. Maybe you know or don’t know that many times people who come into  counseling  for their symptoms of depression want relief–and they want it now. Not tomorrow–not next week–they want it now. Yes, that is what they want. So did I when my life was falling   apart. I couldn’t even put a label on what was happening  inside of me. I felt helpless. Hopeless. But the REAL BREAKING NEWS is that we have discovered, like millions before us, that once I began to believe in a Power greater than myself, my life gradually began to change. Don’t get me wrong, we don’t have the magic potion or the magic wand to all of a sudden remove   feelings of pain, anxiety, fear and lack of a desire to want to live. Let me share with you what we do have to offer.  We have a suggested solution. (This is really old news.)

In the coming days  I would like to share with you   my thoughts -solutions- about depression and its relationship to spirituality. What this means is  there a Power greater than yourself that you believe in?

Stay tuned for more UN-breaking news to come. I think what we have to offer will provide you with HOPE!

The 12 Steps, Victim Thinking

1/1/2015 GETTING MY PRIORITIES STRAIGHT!

1 Comment

AFFIRMATION

On this New Year’s day, I find that my work for my life today, and only today, is to reflect on a time in my life that I have experienced a feeling of happiness and contentment.  If I can’t remember  a pleasant situation for the past, I will construct a happy situation and imagine it occurring right now.

“In getting my priorities straight, my depression got better.”

REFLECTION

In my relationship to God, I am beginning to realize that it isn’t so much that I don’t believe that I’ll ever feel better, but that I just can’t know for sure.  My first priority is to admit that I do have a problem  and that with God’s help, I can get through my depression.

As soon as I give up my victim stance and begin to take responsibility for my feelings and my life, I can start to work as if my recovery is really up to me and that I will, in time, succeed in getting out of this deep dark hole that I call depression. My priority is to begin each day with the conviction that the Twelve Steps will be an aid in getting out of my depression.

MEDITATION

God, we seek your guidance and your strength for our lives. Whatever we have lost or feel we have lost, please heal the holes in our soles and fill them with your love and peace, in our quiet time today, show us what part of us needs to be healed. Give us that spiritual  nudge which gets our life’s priorities straight.

Belief, Depressed Anonymous, Fellowship, Focus, Purpose, Spirituality

A Power Greater Than Ourselves: Our Go To Person

Leave a comment

A POWER GREATER THAN OURSELVES: OUR GO TO PERSON

The more time that I spend in daily prayer and meditation the closer I feel to this Power greater than myself. Now, let’s be honest, it isn’t everyday that I feel this or think this way, but for most days I feel energized by my time in quiet listening. It was when I first joined a Twelve Step recovery program that I I knew that I was truly home. I had always been looking for a home where I could feel acceptance, nurturing and fellowship. It was at my first meeting, 32 years ago, that in all my brokenness, guilt and shame, that I felt I had made it home. It was here that I could reveal who I was, who I thought I was and get a plan for my life, just one 24 hour period at a time. My own feelings of being totally accepted in this new fellowship created in me the belief, without  doubt, that  sanity would be restored to me. How did I know this? What made me a believer? Simply the fact that the members of the group had pretty much the same story as my own. But for all of this, what stood out was the basic belief among all of the members, that there is a Power, and it is greater than me. And that this Power, whom we understand as God, is my GO TO person every day of my life. And the two things this group taught me early on,  is that THERE IS A GOD, AND IT IS NOT ME!

If today you are feeling alone, lost and frightened, please join me here everyday, as I speak about spirituality and the Power greater than myself,  and what it has to do with my recovery, and how it impacts  on our search for  that serenity that we are all seeking. Remember what you seek, seeks you!

Purpose, Serenity, The 12 Steps

I Even Tried To Control God!

Leave a comment

I THINK I WAS A CONTROL FREAK!

“If surrender of our wills to the ‘care of God’ is of the essence of the spiritual life, for anyone who truly desires to free him or herself from a chronic and compulsive behavior such as depression, the Twelve Steps can be your stepping stones to the path of a hope-filled life.” (8)

REFLECTION

My thinking is what has been keeping me depressed these many years.  I haven’t thought of myself as being addicted to sadness or that I might even be a saddict. Now the truth is becoming clear to me as I work the Twelve Steps and attempt to change the way  I think and feel. I  no longer want to be  a victim of my past, but I am becoming a person filled with hope and a new found zest for living. I am finding that my expectations for myself have decreased as my need to be perfect is yielding to a greater acceptance of myself as I am. Being perfect is such a bore. By letting go of my need for perfection it seems that my self-acceptance is beginning to grow.
One of the great freedoms I am experiencing  in my life today is that I don’t have to be in control of everyone’s life or behavior. One of my character defects has been a need to always have everything and everybody under my control. I have even tried to control God until I learned that it is only when I surrender to God that my life can be filled with hope and peace.
MEDITATION
We will no longer allow ourselves to continue to obsess about hiow bad our lives are when all we need to do is learn how to find our peace by allowing God to guide our will and our life on a daily basis. We don’t have to choose to live a life of misery –we can  make different choices which restores my sanity.

SOURCE: Higher Thoughts for Down Days(c)

The 12 Steps

I WILL NOT MAKE A NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTION FOR 2015.

Leave a comment

It is no wonder that after all these years that I have finally got smart. How many times have I made  a resolution to do this or do that and most often as not I couldn’t make it past the first week without falling on my face. So is NOT making a resolution, in fact making a resolution? Well, I think yes it is. I Can’t win!  But don’t you think not doing something is easier that trying to do something that could be challenging and even uncomfortable. And I say to myself, “myself, yes, right on!”

For instance let’s say that I make a resolution  to get up out of bed and do an exercise activity to get my day started. I am making a resolution to do this three times a week. So far so good. I just know from what I read and from other folks who exercise how helpful this is to  put some of our depression symptoms in the back seat. And then we decide that Monday is the day we start our program of exercise.  And Monday comes and we decide that today is too soon to start and we tell ourselves we’ll do it when we feel better. Right now,  we tell ourselves, I am just to tired to do any activity at all today. So there goes the resolution.  So, now we wait for Wednesday to get started.  And on and on the resistance to do anything to overcome our depression symptoms goes by the wayside.

Another scenario is from my own past. When I became depressed I really didn’t have a clue what was going inside of me but I knew something wasn’t right. I could hardly force myself out of the bed in the morning–couldn’t wait to get off work so that I could go to bed–before 5PM. Most unusual for me. I was gradually losing any purpose for my life.   Work.  Bed. Work. I was scared and thought that I was losing my mind. Could not retain a thought. Could not remember a paragraph that I had just finished reading.  What to do? No answer popped  in  my mind. But I knew one thing–I had to get out of bed and go to work or there would be no way to take care of my bills.  So I made a commitment to exercise. One day at a time. A resolution?

I just knew I MUST force myself out of bed…sneakers at my bedside — alarm clock across the room in which I had to get up to turn the awful sounding thing off. In time , by forcing myself to get up, go exercise, I gradually found the fog lift. I learned a great lesson.

Let’s put it this way if you will. I knew something worse would happen if I didn’t get moving. For me there was no “I’ll do it when I feel better,” and putting off taking care of myself. Nothing can happen unless you make the choice to do something today. Is your life at the same point as was mine?  If it is, then force yourself to do what you don’t want to do and watch as feelings, moods and behaviors all begin to change.  For the better you! Happy New Year! One day at a time. All we have is this 24 hour period. Treat yourself kindly!